The present invention relates to an information communication system and its method as well as an information communication apparatus and its method, which are used for transmitting a plurality of pieces of data from equipment for storing data to other equipment.
As a conventional apparatus, there has been developed the so-called CD changer for accommodating a number of CDs (Compact Discs) and automatically playing back the CDs. In such a CD changer, several tens to several hundreds of CDs are accommodated in a single case, and a CD selected by a predetermined operation is automatically played back. The operation to play back CDs may be carried out for each selected CD. As an alternative, a plurality of CDs are selected and the operation to play back the CDs can be carried out for each of the CDs or carried out randomly for pieces of music recorded in the CDs. In general, the CD changer is installed permanently in a room.
As a portable audio-data playback apparatus, on the other hand, an apparatus using an optical disc or a magneto-optical disc with a diameter of about 64 mm has become popular in recent years. The portable audio-data playback apparatus converts an analog audio signal into a digital signal, compresses the digital signal by adoption of a compression technology known as ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding: Trademark) and stores the compressed signal into a magneto-optical disc. The portable audio-data playback apparatus offers a merit of no deterioration of the sound quality caused by the operations to convert the analog audio signal into the digital signal, compress the digital signal and store the compressed signal. There is also another merit of a random playback operation due to the fact that a disc is used as a recording medium.
In the CD changer described above, however, it takes time to replace a CD with another even during an automatic playback operation. It is thus difficult to implement a continuous playback operation. In addition, a CD changer for accommodating 100 to 200 CDs has a large and heavy cabinet, which is very inconvenient when the CD changer is carried or installed.
Also in the portable audio-data playback apparatus described above, once audio data has been recorded onto a magneto-optical disc, the playback operation is limited to the range of the disc. That is to say, a random or general playback operation can not be carried out over a plurality of magneto-optical discs. It is thus necessary to replace a magneto-optical disc with several other magneto-optical discs in order to carry out a random playback operation from a plurality of magneto-optical discs or an operation to play back specified pieces of music. As a result, the user must always take a plurality of magneto-optical discs or optical discs with the portable audio-data playback apparatus.
In order to solve these problems, for example, there has been proposed a music server equipped with a recording medium such as a hard-disc drive having a relatively small size but a large recording capacity to serve as a CD changer described above. In a music server, audio data is read out from a CD, compressed and coded by adopting a predetermined technique and then recorded and stored in a hard-disc drive. By using a hard-disc drive with a recording capacity of about 6 Gbyte, musical data of about 1,000 pieces of music can be recorded. In addition, unlike the CD changer, time and labor to replace a CD with another are not required in a music server. As a result, the music server offers a merit of an easy continuous playback operation. Other merits include the fact that data of numerous pieces of music can be recorded into a unit of hard-disc drive and the fact that the cabinet can be made small in size.
It has been further proposed to use a hard-disc drive or a semiconductor memory as a recording or storage medium in the portable audio-data playback apparatus described above. The music server described above may be connected to the portable audio-data playback apparatus so that audio data stored in the music server can be transferred to the portable audio-data playback apparatus to be recorded or stored into the recording medium of the apparatus. Assume that the recording or storage capacity of the recording medium is 200 MB. In this case, it is no longer necessary for the user to carry a plurality of magneto-optical discs or optical discs. Of course, it is also unnecessary to replace a magneto-optical disc or an optical disc with another.
By the way, a music server is capable of storing a large amount of musical data as described above. Thus, if musical data is transferred from the music server to the portable audio-data playback apparatus by selecting pieces of music thereof to be transferred piece by piece, there will be raised a problem of cumbersome work to repeat the same operation several times.
In order to solve this problem, there has been conceived a data transfer method whereby a list of selected pieces of music from the musical data stored in the music server is created and the selected musical data on the list is transferred in a batch operation. With this method, however, there is raised another problem that it is quite within the bounds of possibility that a confusion occurs due to an unclear purpose as to whether a list created by the user is used to organize numerous pieces of musical data stored in the music server or used to transfer pieces of musical data in a batch operation.